‘Do less and think more’: eight expert tips on boosting productivity for entrepreneurs theguardian com

Build focus like a muscle
Experts believe the past two years of pandemic-related uncertainty and stress have had an
impact on our attention spans, memory and ability to problem-solve or be creative. The
good news is, it’s reversible. Riley aims to build the entrepreneurs he works with up to a
50-minute block of focused work, without any distractions such as emails or social media.

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Time-management techniques such as the Pomodoro method – which breaks work time
into 25-minute intervals, separated by short breaks – or apps that lock social media for 30
minutes at one go can help entrepreneurs break bad habits.
Riley also recommends tracking the working week to see where time can be spared, such
as scheduling meetings back to back, rather than with short breaks in between (when it’s
difficult to get anything meaningful done). “If you work a 40-hour week and can free up
10 minutes a day, that equates to one working week a year,” he adds.
Prioritise ‘deep work’ 
A concept first explored by the US author Cal Newport, “deep work” is the ability to focus
without distraction, to quickly master complicated information and produce better results
in less time. Alicia Navarro was so inspired by Newport’s theory, she founded the virtual
co-working platform Flown to help professionals tap into more focused working. She’s
found multitasking business owners particularly receptive to the idea.
“Entrepreneurs often live in a very reactive state because there are all these emails to
answer and meetings in our diaries, and we try to do deep work in the pockets of time
between everything else. That doesn’t work because it takes 25 minutes to get back into a
deep work state after you’ve been interrupted,” says Navarro. Instead, schedule two-hour
chunks of focused time throughout the week and let “shallow work’’ such as answering
emails, chasing invoices or other administrative tasks fit around that.